"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afraid you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... words of his the individuality of the man somehow was thoroughly realised. Observing him, listening to him, as he stood there palpably before us, one seemed to understand better than ever Thackeray's declaration in regard to those same menials in plush breeches, that a certain delightful "quivering swagger" of the calves about them, had for him always, as he expressed it, "a frantic fascination!" Immediately afterwards, however, as the Reader turned a new leaf, in place of the momentary apparition of that particular flunkey, three very different ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... shirt, and the swagger kummerbund, Denison presented himself next morning to the editor of the Trumpet-Call. There were seven other applicants for the billet, but Denison's white shirt and new kummerbund were, he felt, a tower of strength to him, and even the editor of the Trumpet-Call seemed impressed—clean shirts ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... vagaries of stores and indents and mere men and brass hats, on this and the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men in particular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... though they were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... changed then. Possibly it took on a little swagger; certainly he lost the dignity that he had shown under stress of feeling; he was now more like a cowboy about to boast or affect some stunning maneuver. Walking off the porch, he stood before the weary horse ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out "Heave aho! my hearties," and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb. His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows. Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. And scooting ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, dressed ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the brother of so tender a creature must remember ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... slant—that, absurdly enough, was the nobility of the sight. Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he said. Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself—what was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance—going out into the vast, meaningless, unpitying sea with that dainty arrogance of build; taking the trouble to mock the senseless elements, hurricane, ice, and fog, with a 15-degree slope of masts and funnels: ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has taken ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... fashionable greeting from stout, dandified Captain Cluffe, who was by no means so young as he would be supposed, and made up industriously and braced what he called his waist, with great fortitude, and indeed sometimes looked half-stifled, in spite of his smile and his swagger. Sturk, leaning at the window with his shoulders to the wall, beckoned Puddock gruffly, and cross-examined him in an undertone as to the issue of O'Flaherty's case. Of course he knew all about the duel, but the corps also knew that Sturk would not attend on the ground in any affair where ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Harrison, How they swagger from their garrison! Such a triplet could you tell Where to find on this side hell? Harrison, D——ks, and Clements, Keeper, see they have their payments; Every mischief's in their hearts; If they fail, 'tis want ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Ring; still it hath much of the swagger of the other, though their stature be nearly equal—the manner of carrying the musket is much the same with all the borderers too—one cannot easily tell the form of man from a stump by this light—and—yet do I think it will prove to be ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an' shek hands, an' beg, an' lie dead, an' a lot o' them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan't haud with it mysen, for it's makin' a fool o' a good dog ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvass, if he had worked on it till doomsday." Our author seems to have studied skies, such as they are in Turner or in nature. He talks of them with no inconsiderable swagger of observation, while the old masters had no observation at all;—"their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature; and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in study." What is the it, will be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has no more to do, than to demand ten times the price ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... stalked the streets with a swagger, graded according to the number of his homicides, and a nod of recognition from him, was sufficient to make an humble admirer happy for the rest of ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... pause; during which Lieutenant Chubb looked from me to his principal, with a mirthful grin, as much as to say I was a proven coward after all my swagger. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... malt. On entering, I observed Mr. Gordon deposit, at a sort of bar, the sum of three-pence, by which I shrewdly surmised he had gained the sum of two and nine-pence by our admission. With a very arrogant air, he proceeded to the head of the table, sat himself down with a swagger, and called out, like a lusty royster of the true kidney, for a pint of purl and a pipe. Not to be out of fashion, we ordered the same ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for the artist's self in his works of art. This is good cautious advice. But there are occasional exceptions, and of these Mozart is the most radiant. The qualities of eternal youth and of juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,—all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas—all the qualities that are combined ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... make-believe, the important deeds of adults. Children like to play at being grown-up, whether by wearing long dresses or by smoking, and it makes them feel important to do what the grown-ups do; you can observe how important they feel by the way they strut and swagger. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... a blind to me, for I examined and found that he had already been stealing and selling his ammunition: this is all preparatory to returning to the coast with some slave-trader. Nothing can exceed the ease and grace with which sepoys can glide from a swagger into the most abject begging of food from the villagers. He has ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... on the part of the objectionable relative, Brown. When the wagon which contained his personal effects and the few articles of furniture necessary for his occupancy of the cabin arrived, the exaggerated swagger which his companions had put on in their passage through the settlement gave way to a pastoral indolence, equally half real, half affected. Lying on their backs under a buckeye, they permitted Rice to voice the general sentiment. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... growled Miles, and stalked from the room, his heavy shoulders swinging from side to side in an exaggerated swagger. ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them, before strangers, may be not always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied. After that I think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted and comforted. He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had come to him. But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation, which he trusted ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... [Lat][Vergil]. pride; haughtiness &c. adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c. (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier[obs3]; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c. adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, " bear like the Turk no rival near the throne " [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as the Frenchmen walked along the deck, that there was a good deal of swagger in their manner, but I only set it down to Gallic impudence. While this conversation was going on, one of our midshipmen, a smart youngster—Mowbray, I think, was his name—had been inquisitively examining the Frenchmen, and he ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... mouths of all warriors and sea-rovers round the coasts as the most likely young champion of the time, able to rival, if he had the opportunity, the prowess of Harold Hardraade himself. Yes, he would go and see his mother: he would be kind if she was kind; if she were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was but too apt to do. That he should go back at the risk of his life; that any one who found him on English ground might kill him; and that many would certainly try to kill him, he knew very well. But that only gave special ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... look. His youth had been spent with heroes who loved their bottle. He himself had perhaps supped with Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces were strange to Bond Street! But he is gone. The world, though sadder for his loss, still strives ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of modest swagger about Miles as he spoke, for he rather prided himself on his business acumen and general smartness, so Katherine's next words were a terrible blow ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... at a popular concert by its side, is our favourite comic singer, the Bobolink. I have thought often, when listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low- Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our mowers in haying time. Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... from the cabin she touched me. Smiled with her mannish swagger, for fear we were still observed, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... was a low, ignorant sailor; could scarcely write his own name; but he had biceps and a thick head. Didn't know when he was whipped. I can see him yet, as he used to look, with his giant shoulders and his swagger as he stepped into the ring. There was no nonsense about him—or his fist; could break a board with that. And how the shouts used to go up; 'the pet!' 'a quid on the pet!' 'ten bob on the stars and stripes!' ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... from home were scanty and irregular, he never could bring himself into habits of prudence and economy; often he was stripped of all his present finances at play; often he lavished them away in fits of unguarded charity or generosity. Sometimes among his boon companions he assumed a ludicrous swagger in money matters, which no one afterward was more ready than himself to laugh at. At a convivial meeting with a number of his fellow-students, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with any one present which of the two should treat the whole party ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... radical distinction between them is that whereas Gattamelata is the faithful portrait of a modest though successful warrior, it must be confessed that Verrocchio makes an idealised soldier of fortune, full of bravado and swagger, a Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre of the Quattrocento. But, striking as the contrast of sentiment is, noticeable alike in the artist and his model, these two statues remain the finest equestrian monuments in the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed closely against ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... the old school, in whom could be seen, shining like a flame, a man's great love of a cane. He had lived a portion of his life in South America, and he used to promenade every pleasant afternoon up and down the Avenue swinging a sharply pointed, steel-ferruled swagger-stick. "What's the use of carrying that ridiculous thing around town?" some one said ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... How can he? We know—but we don't tell.... Pride! Rotten pride! We come home from our first voyage sick of it all.... Would give up but for pride.... Afraid to be called 'stuck sailors' ... of the sneers of our old schoolmates.... So we come home in a great show of bravery and swagger about in our brass-bound uniform and lie finely about the fine times we had ... out there! ... And then nothing will do but Jimmy, next door, must be off to the sea too—to come back and play the same game on young Alick! That's the way ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... praise can be given to the Dutch soldier individually. He is clean, civil, good-tempered, and with a far closer resemblance to Englishmen in what we regard as essentials than any other Continental. The officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they think, and that ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... brings back millions!" boasted Denver with a swagger. "I'm made, if I can only hold onto it. But I'll tell you right now, if you want to hold your claims you'd better do a little assessment work. There's going to be a rush, when this strike of mine gets out, that'll make your ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. 'I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... took Grandaddy's advice. That very night he disappeared, to swagger back in a few days in a costume that made him appear almost like Mr. Frog's twin brother—if one didn't look at his face. And there were some among the villagers who even declared that Tired Tim's mouth seemed wider than it had been, and ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 'ave 'em fitted; I'll buy me a swagger-cane; They'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the Hoe again In the name o' William Parsons, that used to be Edward Clay, An' — any pore beggar that wants it can draw ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... fashion that might be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... realizing history, by evolving its romantic element, and thus demonstrating to the languid and lazy readers of ninepenny nonsense, that the actual heroes and heroines of the world have surpassed in romantic daring the fictitious ones who swell and swagger in most novels and poems. Mr. Gayarre's work is more interesting, both as regards its characters and incidents, than Jane Eyre or James's "last," for, in truth, it requires a mind of large scope to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... intend this for a compliment by any means, though it may sound like one. Being an irreligious as well as a stupid man, he held that all who professed religion were hypocritical and silly. Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness. With the exception of Fred Martin, the rest of the crew of the Lively Poll resembled him in his irreligion, but they were very different in character,—Lockley, the skipper being genial; Peter Jay, the mate, very appreciative ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What is ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... exclaimed, returning to his customary swagger. It was quite enough that the matter was generally talked about, and he had said nothing to settle it, in either way. But his manner, more than his words, convinced Gilbert that there was no betrothal as yet, and that the vanity of being regarded ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... it; you didn't know me that first night; you had never seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a few hours just to see how they feel toward women—just how much more contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't know me that ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... On the other hand, "lagoon" has replaced the English "pond," except in the case of artificial water. Pasture is "feed," herd and flock alike become "mob." "Country" is used as a synonym for grazing; "good country" means simply good grazing land. A man tramping in search of work is a "swagman" or "swagger," from the "swag" or roll of blankets he carries on his back. Very few words have been adopted from the vigorous and expressive Maori. The convenient "mana," which covers prestige, authority, and personal magnetism; "whare," a rough hut; "taihoa," equivalent to the Mexican manana; ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough fer us. Yer ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and, with obvious subterfuge, slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... would perhaps have been excusable in the new owner. Most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. Yet it was with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's issue. Sterne ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... object to was the method of those who belonged to the Tirpitz school. The peace was to be preserved; I give that school full credit for this desire; but preserved on what terms? On the terms that the German was to be so strong by land and sea that he could swagger down the High Street of the world, making his ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... American scenery singularly tame and unattractive, and that he finds female beauty (can his standard for this have been Orientalised?) very rare. He predicts that it would be impossible to maintain the Yellowstone National Park as such, and asserts that it was only a characteristic spirit of swagger and braggadocio that prompted this attempt at an impossible ideal. He also seems to think lynching an any-day possibility in the streets of New York. The value of his forecasts may, however, be discounted by his prophecy in the same book that the London County ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... head of the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened and discharged ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of what he had ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... which he sings has endeared the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and melodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too, the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of natives who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... And there was a touch of foppery about him, in the enormous white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... describe it, and he came down again not very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... is a house, s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull; and "nutty" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... drawn, turned, shaped, by a woman! He may deny it. He may swagger and lie about it. Heredity, ambition, lust, noble aspirations, weak self-indulgence, power, failure, success, have their turns with him. But the woman he desires above all others, whose breast is his true home, makes ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... advertisement. Mr. Shaw would advertise himself in this sense even if he were the inmate of a workhouse. He is something of a natural peacock. He is in the line of all those tramps and stage Irishmen who have gone through! life with so fine a swagger of words. This only means that in his life ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... hat and bowed low with exaggerated courtesy and much of his old swagger. The heavy dissipation of the last few months was evident in a marked and shocking way. His figure was gross and bloated, and his bold, ruddy good looks had vanished; his swollen face was purple and the features seemed curiously thickened. The hand which held ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... all things see to the punctual collection of the taxes. Do not study popularity. Attend only to those cases which are entrusted to your care, and work them thoroughly. No greater disgrace can attach to an officer of Court than that a Judge's sentence should be left unexecuted[806]. Do not swagger through the streets exulting in the fact that nobody dares meet you. Brave men are ever gentle in time of peace, and there is no greater lover of justice than he who has seen many battles. When you return to your parents and friends let it not be brawls that you have to boast of, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought he was a guy who had a grievance, an' some of us was for pluggin' ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... dust; and as the street was in a suburb communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances into the town, he had probably, after long day's journey, reached his evening's destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious, restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant, prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had set its significant ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Faculty Club; today was no time to call attention to himself by breaking an established routine. As he entered, trying to avoid either a furtive slink or a chip-on-shoulder swagger, the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around, apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him with a distantly ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... few more remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I marched off to the doctor, and next to the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Henri's face haunted her. She could close her eyes and see it, line by line, his very swagger—for he did swagger, just a little; his tall figure and unruly hair; his long, narrow, muscular hands. Strange and rather uncomfortable. Because she could not summon Harvey's image at all. She tried to bring before her, that night in the train ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had accorded a stature of only about five feet, or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school masters, as the name of Dr. Busby ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... about that," said the Tennessee Shad. "This chap's no bottle baby; he's more of a sport than you think. I'll bet you he's got a few swagger trophies, in the line ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... stop, in a drizzle of rain which prevented sight-seeing for those who had the wish, and the freedom, to go about. As for me, I was ordered by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... eagerly scanned the figures about the station. Three or four swagger young drummers had scrambled off the smoker, and these ambassadors of fashion as many hotel bus drivers were inviting with importunate hospitality to honour their respective board and bed. There was the shirt-sleeved ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... called. He comes from Insterburg. He seemed to swagger very much, this gentleman—very much. I should have liked to have ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of talent—an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game, should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. At least he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without the music,' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missed is dignity: his pitfalls ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in a ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... others to do the same, yet there is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... view of the case seemed to cheer Billy Williams so much that he began to smile on the world again, and felt able to swagger a little, almost as if he had won the race instead of losing it. Somehow, Ceddie Errol had a way of making people feel comfortable. Even in the first flush of his triumphs, he remembered that the person who was beaten might not feel so gay as he did, and might like to think that he MIGHT have ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... SMART "mug-lumberer" one must be To-day, to "fetch" Sassiety; Not too strict, of swagger free, And as "fly" as "fly" can be. Ever pushing, ever bold, (Else one's left "out in the cold") Thus Success you grasp, and hold. And may sing, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... to separate the combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice during his ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... jacket with bigger brass buttons, and a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... never hurried, nor does he loiter. The fashionable gait is comparatively slow, with long steps. The exaggerated stride of the Anglomaniac is as bad form as the swagger of the Bowery "tough." The correct demeanor is without gesture or ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... coals, screw on our cabs, drink the sourest of Bordeaux instead of more generous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable, and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger successfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with the most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our own making and if we dared to be eccentrically rational ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... translate: Natale solum, my estate; My dear estate, how well I love it, My tenants, if you doubt, will prove it, They swear I am so kind and good, I hug them till I squeeze their blood. Libertas bears a large import: First, how to swagger in a court; And, secondly, to show my fury Against an uncomplying jury; And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention, To favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... however, returned when he drove into Crabapple, down the familiar street, past the familiar men and women turning to watch him, with a new automatic measure of attention, in his elevated position. He walked back to his dwelling with a slight swagger of hips and shoulders, and, with something of a flourish, laid down the two dollars he had been paid for ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... looked down at Ugolone, lumbering along behind the van. If they jumped it must be almost on top of him, and in the darkness he looked as big as a house and very alarming. Even Beppo lost his swagger, and as for Beppina, she was speechless with terror. The woman ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... place with a lounging swagger, but his first ball was caught by the immortal Sibthorp, who uttered more puns on the occasion than the oldest man present recollected to have heard perpetrated in any given time. Russell—who, by the bye, excavated several quarts of 'heavy' during his innings—was the last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... thought Gisli had his due herein for the noise and swagger he had made about himself; and Grettir sang this about their ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... atmosphere that it was unhealthy, and if the man happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the appearance ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... good figure, with handsome features, and a remarkably dark complexion; he was dressed in a rich semi-oriental military costume, and had a dashing independent air about him, which Morton thought approached very much to a swagger, but perhaps at that moment he was not a very unprejudiced judge. Ronald could not help staring at him ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice—and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger people,"—these people who pretend to have lungs and what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... full-bodied, she seems to have the power of making point take the place of weight. Yet, oddly enough, there is an occasional air of masculine loose-jointedness about her movements, a half-defiant sort of slouch and swagger which would probably carry much farther in her Old World than in our easier-moving New World, where disdain of decorum can not be regarded ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the talk and swagger of McKay I told the General to let him go, and plainly told McKay that I would go with him. That he, McKay, was an arrant coward and could not take any one, much less a company of one hundred men. I then ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... walk abroad from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Kahira or The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition of subjection and slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever have done. For the heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on the neck of Al Kahira, and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of "swagger" vulgarity has laid The Victorious low. The swarthy children of the desert might, and possibly would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; but ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... in the corner. He had his head tied up, and his arm, like he'd been shot, and the other two men came jumping up to the door with their guns, but when they saw how many men we had they looked awful scairt. We all had our guns out, too!—Jap Kemp gave me one to carry—" Bud tried not to swagger as he told this, but it was almost too much for him. "Two of our men held the horses, and all the rest of us got down and went into the cabin. Jap Kemp, sounded his whistle and all our men done the same just ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... we put up," said Stubbs presently, turning into a large and well-lighted hotel. "Put your best foot foremost now, and walk in like you owned the place. Can you swagger a bit?" ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... him, standing quite motionless. She knew now what had happened. He had grappled with the man's will just as once he had grappled with hers. And he had conquered. She expected him to approach her with the royal swagger of victory, and involuntarily she shrank, dreading to encounter him in that mood, painfully aware of her ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... king alone are now so cheap that the day-laborer has them—all in less than two lifetimes of real science! To-morrow or next day some one will discover, say, the secret of easily and cheaply interchanging the so-called elements. Bang! the whole structure of swagger and envy will collapse!" ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... well-groomed fellow, tall and slim, and, in the matter of years, somewhere in his forties. Duff always dressed well—with a foundation of the late styles of the east, with something of the swagger of the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... between them was almost fantastic so strongly did the arrogance of the one emphasize the deep abasement of the other. Dacre was of large build and inclined to stoutness. He had the ruddy complexion of the English country squire. He moved with the swagger of the conquering race. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... faltering hand, and yet with an imbecile attempt at a swagger, that he knocked at his new friend's door in Pall Mall when the appointed hour arrived. Mr Bailey quickly answered to the summons. He was not proud and was kindly disposed to take notice of Jonas; but ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... your own good fortune," Galen told him. "You wear all that jewelry, and swagger like the youngest tribune, to conceal your diffidence. Being honest, you are naturally frugal; but you are ashamed of your own honesty, so you imitate the court's extravagance and made up for it with little meannesses that comfort your sense of extremes. The truth is, Pertinax, you are a man ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats—not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best—but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... lost their "set." His hat was pulled still farther over his eyes, but at a more rakish angle, and his tie, tucked into his shirt bosom just below the collar, exposed blatantly a diamond shirt stud. But on Jimmie Dale's lips there was an ominous smile not wholly in keeping with the somewhat jaunty swagger he had assumed, and the lines at the corners of his mouth were drawn down hard and sharp. It was miserable work, the work of a hound and cur! Who, better than the janitor of the bank, would have had the opportunity to carry on that ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to the music of the band in front, and notwithstanding the mire which had to be waded through, the line went on at quiet pace, and with admirable order, but there was no effort at anything like semi-military swagger or pompous demonstration. Every window along the route of the procession was fully occupied by male and female spectators, all wearing green ribbons and crape, and in front of several of the houses black drapery was suspended. The tide of men, women, and children continued ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... wounded comrade, and peace reigns. About eleven o'clock Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... and was unhitching the bay mare from the buckboard. Eleanor stood by the corral gate, her Panama hat fallen back from her brown hair and a little of the excitement left in her grey eyes. Bertram approached, grinning; he wore a swagger like that of a little boy who has just turned a series of somersaults before the little girls. Eleanor noticed this. Faintly—and in spite of the gratitude she owed him for turning a neighborly service into a heroic deed—she resented it. Also, Dynamo and ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... good leave—granted, I trust, Master Rattray, granted, I trust—study this—this scabrous upheaval of latent demoralization. What impresses me most is not so much the blatant indecency with which you swagger abroad under your load of putrescence" (you must imagine this discourse punctuated with golf-balls, but old Rattray was ever a bad shot) "as the cynical immorality with which you revel in your abhorrent aromas. Far be it from me to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... his chair close to mine, and as he knew my weak side, the scamp continued: 'Just think what a swagger thing it will be to do, and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... and slink of the derelict and the pompous strut of the pharisee, or the swagger of the bully or the dandy, there is the golden mean in posture, which stands for self-respect and self-confidence, combined with courtesy and ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: "I doughno what's th'matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated. But you're so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin' ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... pretensions to be a "swagger" ship and crew, the wardroom mess took lunch, instead of dinner, at one o'clock, dining at seven o'clock in the evening. This was the hour adopted by the saloon party, who, I learned, were regularly reinforced by ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... What is it shuts me out from them, repels them from me? I creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with envious eyes and ears all you to whom the wondrous gift is given. What is your secret? Is it Tommy's swagger? Then I will swagger, too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why—why, seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, strut beside me mimicking a pouter pigeon? Is it Dicky's playfulness?—Dicky, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... taking up politics seriously?' said Count Rouvaloff, when Lord Arthur had told him the object of his mission; but Lord Arthur, who hated swagger of any kind, felt bound to admit to him that he had not the slightest interest in social questions, and simply wanted the explosive machine for a purely family matter, in which no one ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... in the hut, I saw the messengers arrive, and they were great truculent-looking fellows. There were four of them, and evidently they had travelled night and day. They entered with a swagger and squatted ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... million was less concise, and seems to have been originally aimed against precocious youths who gave themselves the airs of manhood before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into his natural insignificance by the mere utterance ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... I've made an idiot of myself," he went on. "I'd no right to come down here like that. I just want you to forgive me now, that's all. I didn't mean to swagger about being rich. I'm not enjoying it a ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... colonel's uniform and flicking his swagger stick along his booted leg, stood in the doorway. His voice was lazily arrogant. "And Mr. Holland, I must say, the Middle caste seems to have taken over the house. Well, Major Mauser? I assume you do not labor under the illusion ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... president of the Jarviston First National Bank, was his grandfather. Charlie was an engineer at the new nuclear powerhouse, just out of town. Charlie was what is generally known as a Good Guy. He was brash and sure—maybe too sure. He had a slight swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... became the fellow and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. From all which it may be gathered that if Christina had been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of resistance Theobald would not have ventured to swagger with her, but she was not a Barbary hen, she was only a common hen, and that too with rather a smaller share of personal ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... pale, for Mistress Appleby asked me anxiously what was amiss. I hastened to reassure her, but begged her to close the door into the inn place which her husband had left open. She wonderingly complied, but was enlightened a moment afterwards, when she saw Dick Cludde swagger in, followed by the two naval captains whom his ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... End me no ends; engage the whole estate, And force your spouse to sign it: you shall have Three or four thousand more to roar and swagger, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... however, were of course not to be put off without examination; and a boat was immediately despatched from the Vincejo to board, and see what could be made of her. The officer who was sent on board was received by the captain with a good deal of bluster and swagger: he loudly asserted his rights as a neutral, and threatened the vengeance of Congress if they should be infringed. His account of himself was, that he had come out from Boston with a cargo of 'notions,' which he had traded away at Leghorn; and finding some difficulty in getting a return ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... crooked little staircase with a who's-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat off on entering ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... to refresh themselves and refit the ship. The mate on watch greeted them good-humoredly enough and bade them enter the cabin where the captain awaited them. Jack was all a-flutter again but he managed to imitate Joe's careless swagger. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Duncan was compelled to accept these terms. He saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the West, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. Randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. Mr. Tomkins, Linton's father, was elected president of the Groveton Bank in place of Mr. Duncan, much ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... determine whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the thirty shillings had ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... James!" shouted Tom Caldwell, coming up to the sleigh, with a proud swagger, "an' Malcolm here was helpin' us Orangemen put ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... Shakspearean Heroines do a little play-acting between whiles, and the gods and goddesses, or rather their attendants, manoeuvre before the eye becomes weary of watching their approach. For instance, Mars has scarcely time to swagger down to the foot-lights in the most appropriate and approved fashion, before he finds himself called upon to stand near a private box on the prompt side, to be well out of the way of his dancing terpsichorean satellites. Lady Macbeth has hardly "taken the daggers" before King Lear (Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... lions, a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs, such as those with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... Susceptibility sentemo. Suspect suspekti. Suspend pendigi. Suspense (uncertainty) necerteco. Suspicion suspekto. Suspicious suspektema. Sustain subteni. Sustenance nutrajxo. Swaddle vindi. Swaddling clothes vindotuko. Swagger fanfaroni. Swallow (bird) hirundo. Swallow gluti. Swamp marcxejo. Swan cigno. Sward herbejo. Swarm —aro. Swarm of bees abelaro. Swarthy nigravizagxa, dube—nigra. Swathe envolvi, vindi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... band is a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular, sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he looks at the ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... rest there, but have at the Hebrew also! not contenting themselves to tell the people in general, that they "have skill in the Text, and the exposition they offer, agrees with the Original"; but must swagger also over the poor parishioners, with the dreadful Hebrew itself! with their BEN-ISRAELS! BEN-MANASSES! and many more BENS that they are intimately acquainted with! whereas there is nothing in the church, or near it by a mile, that understands them, but GOD ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... doings in swagger society, eh, Droom? If anyone but Billy Fernmore had done that, he would have been ostracised ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon |
